Is Belal Muhammad the UFC welterweight dark horse the division needs? Matt Brown certainly seems to think so. Brown describes Muhammad as the biggest threat to Kamaru Usman’s return to the UFC title, ahead of the current champ, Leon Edwards, and surging Chechen fighter Khamzat Chimaev, in a recent episode of The Fighter vs The Writer.
“If you want to talk about biggest threat to [Kamaru] Usman, I’m going with Belal Muhammad. I think Belal Muhammad is probably the biggest threat to all of these guys. I think Usman beats Leon and the champ at the end of the year is either Belal or Usman.”
Is Belal Muhammad The Biggest Threat At Welterweight?
Brown continued, pointing out that the hardest fight Chimaev has had in his UFC run thus far was against Gilbert Burns, an elite welterweight.
“Belal and Gilbert [Burns] are very similar body types, the way they throw punches and stuff but Belal keeps a much higher pace and stays a little bit more disciplined in his approach.
I think Belal beats Khamzat and I’m 50-50 on him beating Usman. That’s a really, really close fight that I think goes to a decision and is probably a really tough call for the judges.”
Brown doubled down on his call, claiming that Belal Muhammad is the biggest threat to Usman’s return to UFC gold.
“I think Belal is the biggest threat to Usman. I don’t think anyone is going to disagree that Usman is probably going to beat Leon, barring another fifth round knockout kind of homerun hit. Something like that.
We knew it before the first fight, stylistically Usman is a bad matchup for Leon. But Leon really proved a lot of us wrong taking Usman down in the first round. But those second, third, fourth and most of the fifth round, I think we saw what will probably end up seeing most of the next time they fight.”
Brown claimed that Muhammad can feasibly win any fight at welterweight.
“Any fight is a winnable fight for Belal. Him fighting Usman is what I would love to see. I’m 50-50 on that fight. I’m not totally convinced Usman beats Belal Muhammad. That’s a tough fight for him. Just again, it’s that pace. Belal keeps such a pace, has a great chin, keeps coming forward, keeps throwing punches, hits hard.
He’s not like Colby [Covington] where he’s keeping a high pace but it’s kind of soft punches, kind of meaningless stuff that you can disregard and not really worry about. Colby will do so many different shots until he finally gets it whereas Belal, he’s a high pace work horse. He’s a truck. He’s coming hard the whole time. I think he poses a lot of threat for every single person in this division and I want to see him fight Usman.”
Is Matt Brown right about Belal Muhammad? Let us know in the comments.
